The Armour Archive

If I wanted to joun the 14th C mafia... or you know... just be a poseur...

My bottom half would be covered with:

Brais: Basicly linnen boxers with a drawsting
Hosen: Thigh/crotch high wool or linnen socks
I cut these at a 45 degree angle to the weave of the material right?
How do I keep them hootched up so me bum don't show (because really you don't want to see that)
Turnshoes: of a modest pointy toe, possibly with pattens

yes? no? maybe?

Basicly, yes.

The tops of the hose would likely have been held up by points (cords) attached to the tops of the hose and to... something. There's disagreement on this, but it might have been to the braes, a linen undergarment called a pourpoint, or to the inside of your doublet.

Depending on your time frame you could do several points in your hose to hold them up better. The Charles de Blois garment has 5 sets of points in it; some images show front and side lacings to hold hose up better. Your over garment will cover your underwear be it simple tunic or a cote.

Your torso garment should be long enough to cover your underwear.

If you have the dreaded "diapey-butt," make your cotte longer.

John
Jehan de Pelham, ecuyer and servant of Sir Vitus
www.mron.org

Check out http://larsdatter.com/hose.htm for pictures of how the hoses are enhootched.

Thanks Karen! The link in "The Romance of Alexander (Bodl. 264), 1338-1344: Good detail of the attachment of men's hose in fol. 90v" needs a period before the file type. It should read "http://image.ox.ac.uk/images/bodleian/m ... 64/90v.jpg"

Like others have said. Your top garment will cover your braies (you hope), or if you're very shy, you can get joined hosen, but they're not as comfortable/cool in warm climates as chausses, and they're about twice as expensive.
Mid to 4th quarter of the 14th century, you can wear a cotehardie like this handsome devil. 14th century is just great. You also have the option of tunics.

Thanks for the info guys. Much appreciated.

The gist of this is soft kit for under armor...

Would it be entirely messed up to quilt padding into my brais? Thing is, the cuisses I'm building are going to be more than sufficient (if not overkill) for the lower thigh. Knees will get padded on their own, greaves will probably be minimal padding, or I might just do wool chauces to get around that. But there is a knight in the local group well known for throwing wrap shots to the most un-armored of hineys, and it smarts, and I'm not into that....

Probably be better to make some padded shorts, and wear them under the brais yeah?

Cotehardie's are nice but if your a fat bastard like me a gown is often more flattering.

What other options are there for turnshoes? While yes turn shoes are nice, sometimes a nice boot is more necessary. Does anyone have an example of a 14thc boot say ankle-calf high?

To the good gentle who stated the Blois cote has five pairs of points inside, this is incorrect. It has seven. One on each of the front panels, one each just above the side seams, one on each side of the back lower piece, and one smack in the middle of the back piece. Below is a highlighted photo (unfortunately very low resolution–all I could find online) of the inside of the cote in question. Note the points are quite visible, though the ones in the side seam on the left of the picture are a bit hard to pick out visually. Incidentally, I take the middle point to be an excellent argument for this garment having been made for wearing with joined hose. If they were split hose, what would be the point of the point?

As to 14th century ankle-high turn-shoes, there are several surviving ones but illuminations of the day don't seem to show them very often. Bata Shoe Museum has a surviving one. They used to have pictures up on their website but I can't find them now. I've added a couple of shots of it below. There are also several different ankle-boots documented in the books Shoes and Pattens by the Museum of London, and Stepping through Time by Olaf Goubits. My copies are at home and I'm at work (where the scanner is), so I can't upload any of those pictures.

Wow, that is an awesome boot! It doesn't look particularly difficult to construct either, though I may be decieved.

Now I feel like making a pair of those dammit!


Are those buttons or hook and eye closures? If they're buttons, what are they made of?

Now I'm itching for a pair of those.

Heck, I should go see them in Toronto, I'm headed there next weekend.

Corey

There are quite a good number of those boots in Stepping Through Time; if you really want to make a pair that book would really help you out.

Your hose construction, attachment and length (height) are generally speaking dependent on which part of the 14thc you portray, early to mid and you attach the hose to the breech strap and later to the upper garment doublet/pourpoint.

Attachments involving hose to breech (braies) include tying to the breech strap, a 'button' - possibly a small bead or other possibly part of the breech and then the hose cloth pushed over it and tied on.

Corey D. Sullivan wrote:Wow, that is an awesome boot! It doesn't look particularly difficult to construct either, though I may be decieved.

Now I feel like making a pair of those dammit!


Are those buttons or hook and eye closures? If they're buttons, what are they made of?

Now I'm itching for a pair of those.

Heck, I should go see them in Toronto, I'm headed there next weekend.

If you go to Bata and can get photos, I'd love copies. I quite like that boot, myself. As to constructing it, it's not hard, per se, but it is fairly complicated to get the fit right. They would have been made inside out on a carved wooden form called a last and sewn together using a specialized stitch which keeps all the thread inside the shoe where it won't wear as quickly.

The attachments are called toggles. They're really easy to make. You take a strip of leather having a bulge one end. You cut a slit in the middle of the bulge and roll the other end of the strip through the slit. Pull it tight and take a stitch through it to hold it in place and you're done. Basically like a zip-tie pulled up tight but made of leather. The loose end is sewn to the inside of the leather and often passed through a slit to the outside, and the toggle goes through a slit on the other piece of the boot.

"If you go to Bata and can get photos, I'd love copies"

If you go, I'd be vey appreciative of pics as well!

If I'm allowed to take photos, I'll definitely share.

Mephit, thanks for that clarification r/ the toggles. That's alot easier then either small buttons or hooks.

Memphit,

Were did the picture of Charles' cotte come from?

Thanks!
Mac

That style of boot is detailed well in Stepping Through Time; pattern, different closures, and how the toggles are made. Some like boots have shoe laces, some have the toggles, and some have buckles. The book is well worth owning if you want to make shoes and boots.

Well, I'm not serious enough about making them yet to go out and buy that book at $75, but I'll keep it in mind, thanks!

So many books, so little money and time...

Mac wrote:Memphit,

Were did the picture of Charles' cotte come from?

Thanks!
Mac

Honestly, I wish I could remember. I found it online several years ago when looking for documentation on Charles' cottehardie. I kept every picture I could find and that was one. Of course, I wasn't near smart enough to keep the URLs. That would have been far too clever. D'oh! It's the only inside shot of the cotte I've ever seen, so I snagged it as fast as I saw it.

OK, I've had a chance to dig out my Goubitz, and here's a paraphrase of what he has to say about them. These are what he calls Type 35 (Instep-Toggle fastening shoes and boots), variant II. This variant seems to have been very common as about 450 examples have been unearthed at Dordrecht alone. They are characterized by their high leg-part (called the quarters in modern shoe parlance), the large number of toggles (as many as a dozen) and the triangular tongue coming up from from the vamp.

I've uploaded a picture of the closest diagram from Goubitz to the Bata boot. It's from page 163 of Stepping Through Time. You can see the reconstruction of the boot and the cutting pattern. The tall, thin, triangular piece is the heel stiffener (sewn into the inside of the quarters at the base of the heel) and you can see the stitch holes for it on the main vamp/quarters piece. The sort-of chevron-shaped piece is the tongue. The quarters are pieced together out of what's available, so the seams are somewhat odd. The same is true of the sole.

Also, see the photo I've uploaded of two toggles I made last night for a pair of shoes I'm making. These took about 10 minutes total. I've unrolled one to show the flat shape. Very simple. According to Goubits, the medieval ones were a little bit more complex, being wrapped a couple of times before piercing rather than just the once. I find my simplified method works just fine, however.

Ha I brought my book in this morning to scan page 163 also

Mephit

On your toggle; why did you go with a large square hole? Goubitz shows them as having two slits the long tounge slips through; I have made a pair of the Hedeby toggle boots like this before and I find the double slit way was perfect.

Toggles shown of page 162:

Thank-you very much for the scans, both of you! I've never attempted a pair of shoes before, and this makes it much easier for me.

Yes James, the toggles you've shown aren't any harder to make, but I think that they wouldn't work as well with the leather that Mephit used. It's too thick, and the toggle would end up being very large and bulky.

Corey D. Sullivan wrote:Yes James, the toggles you've shown aren't any harder to make, but I think that they wouldn't work as well with the leather that Mephit used. It's too thick, and the toggle would end up being very large and bulky.

Could be; I used 8oz leather for mine but they were larger on the example I was working with than the boot we are currently talking about.

James B. wrote:On your toggle; why did you go with a large square hole? Goubitz shows them as having two slits the long tounge slips through; I have made a pair of the Hedeby toggle boots like this before and I find the double slit way was perfect.

Mr. Sullivan has the right of it. I was going to use just a slit, but when I tried to pass the strip through, it was too thick so I widened the hole a bit. If I'd made the toggle bulge (for lack of a better term) wider, I could have just widened the slit, but that wasn't really an option. That leather is about 8 oz, but the toggles are quite small. They're for closing a pair of poulaines, so I wanted a pretty fine toggle for a dressy pair of shoes. That's also why I made a single wrap rather than the double that Goubitz shows. With 8 oz vegtan, that'd be a pretty thick toggle.

I think part of the problem we have is that the types of leather used by medieval shoemakers just aren't available. I search long and hard at the local Tandy for the most supple tooling sides I can find, but when you compare them to alum-tawed leather (which is really closer to a modern chrome tan than an oak tan. Alum and chrome both use mineral salts to maintain flexibility and restrict the damage from water and decay) they're still stiff and hard to work. It's just not that comparable.

No no!! Too Saxy!

Mac wrote:Memphit,

Were did the picture of Charles' cotte come from?

Thanks!
Mac

Hi Mac;

If found a similar photo on this website:
http://www.geocities.com/wolfram_von_ta ... rpoint.htm

The photo is attributed to Marie Schoefer, the curator of the cotte exhibit. If you look closely at the color image posted in this forum, I believe you will see her name next to the image on the lower right-hand side of the photo.

I don't know if this will help, but it is the best I could come up with.


Take care,

Duane

This thread is the Archive at its best.

Thanks guys.

Personally I tie my hose to a light leather belt that I wear over my brais.

I dont know if its period or not, but I dont care, Im worried about my hose dragging my undies off if things go horribly wrong.

I love wearing 14th Century "boy clothes".....I point my hosen to my braies via round lacing holes sewn in.

BaronMal wrote:Personally I tie my hose to a light leather belt that I wear over my brais.

I dont know if its period or not, but I dont care, Im worried about my hose dragging my undies off if things go horribly wrong.

I've been wearing braies and chausses for years, and I've never had this happen. If you tie the braies snugly above your hips with a cord that wont stretch, it shouldn't be possible.

For some reason, I never have the "diaper butt" problem. Maybe my braies just fit well? They weren't made to fit, so it'd just be good luck if that was the case...

-Donasian.

" I love wearing 14th Century "boy clothes".....I point my hosen to my braies via round lacing holes sewn in."

i do believe that on at least one occasion women were killed for doing just that.

Donasian wrote:

BaronMal wrote:Personally I tie my hose to a light leather belt that I wear over my brais.

I dont know if its period or not, but I dont care, Im worried about my hose dragging my undies off if things go horribly wrong.

I've been wearing braies and chausses for years, and I've never had this happen. If you tie the braies snugly above your hips with a cord that wont stretch, it shouldn't be possible.

For some reason, I never have the "diaper butt" problem. Maybe my braies just fit well? They weren't made to fit, so it'd just be good luck if that was the case...

-Donasian.

Im not saying its a reasonable or even rational fear, its just a fear=)

When I did theatre in high school and colledge I tended to wear belts AND suspenders for the same reason.

mephit wrote: I search long and hard at the local Tandy for the most supple tooling sides I can find, but when you compare them to alum-tawed leather (which is really closer to a modern chrome tan than an oak tan. Alum and chrome both use mineral salts to maintain flexibility and restrict the damage from water and decay) they're still stiff and hard to work. It's just not that comparable.

Alum-tawed stuff is indeed the shiznit. If you need some, drop me a PM, I have plenty and can arrange something (it's nearly all I use, since it's historically uber-correct for Hungary).